The first big question to be answered in every spring training is this: Who got hurt before reporting to camp? Mike Elias’s first media availability with local reporters answered the question on Wednesday morning. It’s not a great report this year. The big news is that Jackson Holliday suffered a broken hamate bone while taking live batting practice on February 6. Additionally, Jordan Westburg has been dealing with some oblique soreness for about three weeks, although for the time being Elias claims Westburg will be ready for Opening Day.
The February 5 acquisition of Blaze Alexander from the Diamondbacks has a bit more of a clear rationale now that we know Westburg has the oblique issue. The team needed to firm up its infield depth if there was any kind of question mark for any of its key players.
This need for depth only became more apparent the very next day with Holliday’s broken hamate bone. According to Elias, Holliday will be having surgery that will remove the hamate tomorrow. If Holliday is able to recover on a typical timeline, it might be Opening Day before he’s even ready to resume baseball activities, and then he’ll need to start building up like he would have done in spring training from that point.
Hamate injuries are notorious for continuing to sap power for some time even after the player is able to play, so we can probably already rule out a big power breakout for Holliday in 2026. He’ll likely be back off the IL at some point in May, even if the full strength doesn’t come back right away. Alexander is going to get a good chance to get some playing time early in the season.
One piece of good news from Elias’s conference is that there were no major pitching injuries. If anything, this news turned out better than expected, as Elias said that Zach Eflin is a full go to start out in spring training. I had been assuming he might be a few weeks behind in his routine after last year’s back surgery. With apologies to Colin Selby, the fact that he has shoulder inflammation and will be hitting the injured list is not a major shakeup to anyone’s imagined Orioles roster. This does still create a roster opening, since Selby was in the projected bullpen especially after Kade Strowd was included in that Arizona trade. It’s not immediately clear who will fill that spot.
Elias also addressed the topic of pitchers who could have gone either way as a starting pitcher or a reliever. For camp, Tyler Wells will be preparing with a starting pitcher’s workload. Chayce McDermott is headed for the bullpen. Neither of these are too surprising, so it’s more notable that they’ve been confirmed by Elias.
Wells doesn’t have a clear path to the Opening Day rotation in my eyes unless someone ahead of him gets hurt. I think he’s the #6 guy around, so the team does need him to be ready for that workload if it becomes necessary due to anything that happens with another player in camp. I’m not going to pretend that I think McDermott might be anything or that it would be a good news if we ever see him on the big league roster for any length of time.
The next step is to get everybody through spring training with as few injuries as possible. The offseason injury report was pretty good in spring training last year and the Orioles still ended up with a whole bunch of problems by the time Opening Day rolled around and afterwards.